Pieces Of You
by StitchAndRepair
Summary: "I look for pieces of you in everyone I meet"


**"I look for pieces of you in everyone i meet."  
**  
The first guy Ian fucks at his base is a guy that is kind of quiet and a bit of a pushover, but every now and again, just once in a while, he gets this grin on his face; a dirty grin with the corners of his mouth turned down just slightly that it can almost be mistaken for a grimace. And as Ian kisses that grin off of the boy's face, he imagines it's somebody else's lips he is biting, somebody else's waist he is digging his fingertips into.

The first guy Mickey fucks after Ian has a string of freckles along his shoulders. Mickey doesn't understand why he doesn't get the same urge to run his finger along them and connect them in his mind like constellations.  
*

Ian makes friends with a guy at his base that has tattoos on his hands, 'fuck' and 'cunt' spelt out in shaky handwriting and it makes Ian's gut twist and his palms sweat and his heart hammer against his ribs. He can't help himself as he walks over to him and introduces himself. His cheeks hurt from the width of his smile when the guy just insults his hair color in response.  
*

Linda replaces Ian with a skinny, overgrown 21 year old dropout and it makes Mickey laugh, the taste of bile seeping onto the back of his throat, because he is so different to Ian. He is a lot more like Mickey and it makes his insides go sour and his fists clench tightly at his side.  
The guy talks though. Not often, but he mentions that he's got a big family and fuck-up parents and sometimes the responsibility weighs down too heavy on his shoulders that he feels like his back is going to break with the pressure. The look on his face, the flicker of sudden youth and a kid that grew up too fast reminds Mickey of the look Ian used to get when he talked about his elder sister.  
Mickey doesn't take the guy to the baseball pitch, but he does smoke a joint with him in the alley and it's the closest thing that Mickey has ever had to friendship besides Ian.  
*

He looks for Mickey's name in every piece of mail he receives; some evidence, solid, hand-held proof that Mickey actually exists outside of his imagination. Life away from the Southside is so different and they were such a secret that - other than the hurt in his heart and a scar on his shoulder - it's like it didn't even exist. Three times in two years Mickey is mentioned and it's never anything about them, never anything other than vague mentions from Mandy and once in a letter from Debbie that said Mickey isn't doing too bad of a job running the shop like Ian used to do.

Ian rubs the scar on the top of his shoulder whenever missing Mickey feels like it's too much. He got it when Mickey was fighting with Shane Costello and Ian had made the mistake of trying to calm him down, stop him from killing the guy. Mickey had pushed him, moving with him, forcing Ian backwards onto a jagged, broken piece of wood that tore a chunk right out of his shoulder.  
Mickey had immediately calmed down and had spent the rest of the night patching him up with some cheap vodka and some drug-store butterfly stitches and the missing chunk of his flesh didn't seem like too much to give up as Mickey pressed his body weight into his and ran his teeth along Ian's collarbone, whispering apologies into his skin.

*  
He takes a guy home one night when it's too cold to fuck in the alley and he's too poor to be able to rent a place.  
He's half-cut by the time they stumble into his bedroom, the smell of cheap perfume in the air.  
They're being clumsy, falling over the bedposts, stubbing their toes against the furniture and he steps onto a hairbrush, the bristles digging like knives into the heel of his foot, but Mickey needs this like air and he doesn't care how clumsy it is as long as he gets to feel that release, that emptiness in his chest at the end.

They're half naked and Mickey thinks he hears himself laugh as he throws the guy down on the bed, listening to the sounds of it creaking with the sudden weight.  
He's drunker than he thought.

He stumbles backwards, knocks over the bedside drawers. He doesn't even glance back at it, just runs his tongue over his bottom lip, watches the shit-eating grin spread across the guy's lips and he think he might even be opening his mouth to say something but Mickey just smirks at him, moves behind him and rips at the guys boxers. He's inside of him without enough preparation and he can hear the guy hiss in pain, but Mickey's eyes are now focused on something else to really register it. Something he had managed to completely forget about. Something that had, until this point, been collecting dust in the back of his drawers.  
Something now scattered across his floor like shards of glass that cut deeper at Mickey than real glass ever could.

Six letters. All addressed to Ian Gallagher. He stares at the name on the top envelope, written in his shaky, drunken scrawl and the empty feeling, different to the one he craved, hits him with the force of a ten ton truck.

*

The guy's hands are fisted in the sheets as Ian moves inside of him, one hand on his shoulder, the other holding onto his hip. It's the first time Ian has managed to get laid in weeks and he feels almost euphoric as the guy pushes back onto him, groaning loudly, his head ducked between his shoulders. Ian gets lost in the spattering of freckles across the guy's back, in the tan that stopped just below the slope of his neck.  
"Fuck Gallagher, get moving" Ian's hips stutter for a moment, the voice gruff, practically a growl pushed through the guy's lips and Ian has to rest his swimming head against the dip in the guy's spine for a moment, the ache in his chest too sharp, before he begins moving again. Harder and faster than before and the guy hisses in pain but doesn't tell him to stop and Ian almost smiles at the bruises that spread like paint across the guy's hips.

*

When Mickey is drunk he lets himself get angry. Angry at himself for ever letting Ian go in the first place, angry at Ian for not believing in him, believing in them. He gets angry at Terry and at Svetlana, even though none of it is really her fault. When the rage and the hurt gets too much, Mickey presses his thumb into the dip in his thigh where the bullet went through.  
It's the softest part of his skin and in his drunken state he realizes that there's probably some kind of irony or some shit in that, but he can't connect the thought together, so he instead takes another sip of JD and presses his thumb even harder against the dip.

He wishes that he had taken the time to remember Ian knelt over him, holding onto his face. He wishes he could remember the comforting words that Gallagher had said to him to calm him down as the blood pumped from his leg, but he couldn't. He couldn't remember any of it apart from the pain that pulsed through his body and the smug look on Kash's face as he pulled the trigger.  
Mickey can remember, though, the times after that, whenever he and Gallagher got stoned and sometimes even during sex, Ian would place his hand over the scar so gently, would run his fingers over it like an unspoken apology.

*

"Man fuck Van Damme!" Ian has to swallow the memories that have become lodged in his throat, making it suddenly hard to breathe and he feels two foot fall as the guys all around him at the bar laugh. The guy who slurs his hatred on Van Damme smacks him heartily on the back and Ian splutters, chokes on his beer and spills the rest of it along the bar.  
The guy is blonde-haired, six foot and kind of a prick and Ian's skin prickles under the feel of his palm against his back, but it doesn't stop him from buying the guy beers for the next two rounds.

*

Mickey's walking to work, late yet again, when he sees it. A little yapper dog that makes his ears feel like they're bleeding from its constant high-pitched barking. It's wearing a blue and yellow sweater and he starts laughing. He laughs until his stomach suddenly turns and he has to work hard to control his breathing so that he doesn't throw up the contents of it. He nods his head politely at the dog's owner when she asks if he's okay and thanks him for running over and opening the door for her and Mickey forces a smile before making his way back down the street.

*

He is walking along the street when he sees two boys - one with long brown hair and one with a red tint to his hair that didn't look natural and Ian finds himself smiling and he's not sure why. They look like they're arguing, but also like they're used to that; as if that's just how they communicate and it's comfortable between them. Ian watches them, with a small smile that sadness tugged on the ends of like a comforting old friend, until they disappear round the corner. Pushing back memories that clouded his mind, Ian just scuffs his shoe against the ground and carries on walking.

*  
Mickey is looking round for his old Ipod when he finds them buried under a pile of clothes and moldy plates underneath his bed. They're scratched, the words engraved on them faded from the cheap metal but he can faintly make out the G lagh r of Ian's surname and he pretends that it's just so he doesn't lose them as he puts them round his neck and tucks the dog tags safely against his chest.  
*

He's walking through a rundown bar; just popping in to use the bathroom, when he sees a shirtless guy with a swastika tattoo that covered his entire back. He closes his eyes, screws them tight enough to see black and red dots behind the lids, memories hitting him like a slap to the face and he thinks of a double bed laid in the middle of a room, a faint smell of cheap perfume in the air and a hairbrush and lipstick placed in front of a mirror. He thinks of posters ripped down from the wall, a smile he'd never seen on a woman he never wants to see again as she threw her arms around the boy she now called her husband.  
As he pushes his way to a stall, fumbles with the lock and breathes heavy, half collapsed against the door, he can't understand why - with all the pain in his chest - there's a thin trickle of guilt dripping down his throat like acid, building like sand in the pit of his stomach.  
*

Mickey sees a flash of red hair when he walks out of his bedroom and his heart stutters and for a moment he thinks it's 3 years ago and things are great, but then suddenly Mandy is laughing and talking about her new boyfriend - the redhead - with a name Mickey doesn't hear and he thinks that maybe it's not just him that is clinging to the little memories of Ian through red hair and freckles. Mickey ignores Mandy's curious stares when he just sits down with them both and watches a movie.

*  
Ian is seeing a bouncer from a club close to his barracks that's got a shock of spikey black hair and a sharp tongue and Ian can't understand why he's even attracted to him. But he gets a feeling like his insides are made of gasoline and the guy is a lit match and it stirs something familiar in him, something he can't quite remember; like a memory that bubbles to the surface only to get swallowed back down.

And with every kiss of the guy's lips, every squeeze of his hips, Ian thinks maybe he can connect the pieces, get that memory back, but each time it's the same thing and Ian accidentally bites too hard on the bouncer's lip, so hard it bleeds, in desperation to cling on to the ache of the memory in his head.

*

Mickey, lost in his thoughts, bumps into a guy on the street and bends down to pick up the dog tags that fell from his neck like leaves from a tree. A hand knocks against his, grabs at the tags before he gets the chance and he steps back, standing straight, wondering what the guy's problem was.

His heart trips over itself in his chest when he sees that the guy is in full army uniform and Mickey just blinks at it like it should be familiar.

But it's been four years and it isn't familiar at all but the ache stabbing at his gut is something he's still not used to after all this time.

The guy studies them and Mickey feels the need to tell him that they're not his own tags, they belonged to somebody else once upon a time. He's close to rambling, barely able to bite onto his tongue to stop the words spilling out from his mouth, like the opening of Pandora's box - an unleash of chaos after he'd worked so hard to find order.

He swallows the words down, almost chokes on them as they're forced down to die in his stomach with everything else he'll never say and Mickey notices the look in the soldier's eyes. The pity is clear, practically shining in the guy's eyes. He thinks Mickey lost somebody to the war.

And Mickey can't even bring himself to deny it, because in a way it's true. But it isn't a war in a desert with officers and gunshots, it's - at least to Mickey - a war far more gritty, far more damaging, that racks up an even bigger body count; it is a war in Mickey's mind.  
It's the war waging on in his head that has caused his world to fall apart around him, that had caused the people in his life to leave him.

Mickey just nods at the guy and takes the dog tags from his hands and the guy salutes him before continuing down the street.

Mickey watches him for a moment before he pushes his thumb into the dip in his thigh so hard it stings. Then he re-clasps the dog tags around his neck and makes his way back to work.

*

He pulls out of the man quickly, without grace or warning, and he can taste too much vodka thick like fur on his tongue and he just wants to get out of there, out of the too-small cubicle and out of the bar and out of Chicago. It's Ian's first night back in four years and after all this time it should've been easier, but it wasn't.  
Everything was the same as how he had left it except Liam had cried when he moved in to hug him and the smiles on his siblings faces were strained, worn at the corners like they'd been held there, forced up like picture frames with hooks and nails for far too long. They were angry with him and so sad and so happy to see him, see the changes in him, changes he wasn't aware of until he returned here and he had just needed to escape.  
The desire never leaves, not even after his fifth shot of vodka, not after his 7th and not even after he shoots his load into the nameless guy in the cubicle of a dirty bathroom.

But it eases. It eases as familiar faces greet him, cheering his return, teasing him for being a patriot for a country that was fucked, for supporting a world that was losing a fighting battle. It eases as he gets caught up on stories of crazy antics from the residents of the South side.  
And it eases slightly more as the guy smiles at him; a wide, lazy grin that stirs a hazy image of Mickey in his mind and, fuck, he hadn't thought about him in a while, but he thinks that maybe Mickey smiled at him like that once. But it's been so long that he can't really remember and an uneasy feeling washes over him.  
Because he's pretty sure the calm feeling he gets from that smile is because it was once attached to Mickey and he doesn't understand why it's so painfully easy to remember all of the bad things, but the good things, the good times are suddenly so hard. Because there had to be some of those, otherwise the pain was for nothing, what they went through, suffered through, was for nothing.

He tries to remember all those nights that he sat with Mickey, lay in his bed and tried to memorize every detail about him, every fading bruise, every scar and every smile.

And it hits him suddenly that he can't remember Mickey like he used to and it tugs at his chest like a weight, because even though he told himself he wanted to forget Mickey because of all the hurt, he thinks it may actually hurt more to not be able to remember. Because he can remember the bad parts far too easily, but the good stuff - like the way Mickey's mouth tastes or the look he'd get in his eyes when he thought Ian wasn't looking, or that stupid grin that would spread like butter across his face when he thought he was being cute - hid in the dark, dusty corners of his mind and he couldn't seem to find the light switch.  
Everything seemed so hazy, so unclear, but yet the image of Mickey's face when Svetlana sat on top of him, the image of Mickey standing at the altar, of Mickey's bruised skin underneath Terry's fist was seared into his brain, scarred as permanently as the map of skin across his shoulder from that party all them years ago.

*

The photo falls like a feather from a page in one of Mandy's magazines and Mickey almost doesn't pick it up, but he does anyway and when he sees the face staring back at him, he has to sit down or else he'll fall. Because he hasn't seen that face, not like this, in far too long.  
His heart didn't even ache as he took in the big, wide grin that spread across the freckled face smiling up at him. If anything it felt like it was beating again for the first time in years.  
He had forgotten about that smile, the way it lit up his whole damn face - he hasn't thought about Ian in a while if he was honest. He could barely remember the smile that would stretch across Ian's face at the sight of him - the only way Mickey had been able to remember him until now was with the blank look on his face the day he had left, the glare that showed eyes full of hurt as he necked vodka at the wedding, the broken face as Ian watched Svetlana moving with him inside of her.

As he runs his thumb over the outline of Ian's face, he sucks in a breath and thinks of those moments after getting sucker punched; where you're suddenly so grateful that you can remember how to breathe and your lungs fill with a rush of air and it's never tasted so good.  
Just seeing the image of Gallagher's face has a thousand memories shooting like stars through Mickey's mind; some he'd rather forget, some he'd hoped he already had, some he'd tried to bury away forever and some that made the corner of his lips turn up in a smile.  
It's been so long since he saw Gallagher and he has missed him for even longer.

He still sometimes got a shock of pain in his chest, in his gut, that radiated through him and it was the only thing that reminded him that they had actually happened.  
For a long time he tortured himself with memories; made himself think of Ian, made that pain press against the insides of his skin so hard and so sharp that he wanted to claw it out, claw at his skin 'til the pain flowed like blood out of him, away from him.  
The pain lessened over the years, sometimes it even seemed to go away completely - he could pass someone in combat trousers or a blue hoodie without his mind flashing with an image of red hair and pale skin and freckles - but just as suddenly the pain would reappear, bursting like a balloon inside his chest and it was like he would forget to breathe.

But this, now, with the image of Ian, frozen in time, smiling up at him, Mickey can't help but remember the times that Ian smiled at him like that. He suddenly remembers the times spent in the Kash 'n' Grab, just the two of them and the constant bickering as they restocked the shelves. He remembers the easy atmosphere between them, the friendship that was supposed to come before everything else.

He remembers Ian and not the pain.

He hears her before he sees her; a loud high-pitched scream and arms suddenly wrapped tight enough to choke him around his neck. He drops his knife and fork and swallows his food, turns round and is greeted with excitable lips pushed against his that taste of raspberry chapstick.  
He smiles at Mandy and stands up, hugging her as tight as he can through a mouthful of laughter.  
She pulls back and punches him hard in the arm. He kisses her forehead and smiles as she turns to Lip and elbows him with tears in her eyes, "why didn't you tell me?".

Lip just smiles at him and it's the first real smile Ian has seen from him, from anyone, in a long time and it feels like a storm of waves has just crashed up against his insides, eroding them like rock. He blinks away the sudden hit of emotion and sits blindly back down onto his chair.  
Mandy is sitting on his lap almost before he's sat down properly, his burger stolen from his plate and she's biting into it and it's suddenly so familiar and everyone is laughing and smiling and his heart hammers in his chest and it's so strange and so different and for a moment he feels like he can't cope.  
But then Mandy is looking at him, studying his face with her eyes all lit up, so genuinely excited to see him and he didn't realize quite how much he had missed her. He blinks away images of Mickey as her gaze lingers on him. He tries not to notice the shape of her nose, the outline of her eyes, her cheekbones and wide grin; all the features that she shared with Mickey.  
Suddenly, like a bottle smashing to the ground, contents spilled everywhere, Ian can suddenly remember everything.  
His face pulses as a ship full of memories flood into his mind and as Mandy laughs at something Carl just said, Ian has to close his eyes against her shoulder and remember to breathe. Just breathe.

*

As Mickey bites down on the guy's shoulder, his mind flashes to an image of him with his lips pressed against Ian's, muttering apologies for the deep cut and the bad stitching and too much alcohol.  
Thoughts of Ian had been plaguing his mind for the last week or so. Seeing that picture was like when you hear a word for the first time and then suddenly it seems to be everywhere.  
Ian was everywhere.

Mickey remembers Ian, the good stuff and the bad. He thought of him as he walked to the El, remembered their pointless adventures on the train, running from the security guards, the adrenaline that had his insides jumping and alive even after the two of them were hidden away and safe. He thought of him at the Kash 'n' Grab, remembered the smell of Ian's body wash and shampoo as he walked aimlessly up and down each aisle.  
The ghost of Ian walked beside him, laid next to him in his bed.  
He thought of Ian's warm breath against his neck, the feeling of Ian inside him and how electrifying it always seemed, each time better than the last.  
Mickey bit his tongue to stop from calling out Ian's name as he came.  
He can taste blood in his mouth and thinks of red hair and a hand cupped over his thigh, blood spilling through the gaps in the fingers.

A dull ache spreads through his gut as he gets dressed and he should be used to that by now - the sharp jolts against his insides as he thinks of the cigarette that he and Gallagher used to share after sex, the pain that shot up his neck and made his temples pulse and his eyes sting against his closed lids.

The pain used to overwhelm him, the pain in his gut the only thing he was able to focus on, but now it was different. The hurt bled together with the happiness he used to feel, memories of that stupid grin on Gallagher's face tugging his own lips into a smile, and the ache didn't seem so bad.

With a barely muttered goodbye to the guy whose name he had already forgotten, Mickey makes his way to the Alibi with that ache warming his stomach in a twisted mix of happiness and hurt.

He's rubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes as he crashes onto the stool, suddenly tired, trying to clear his brain. It had been years and he shouldn't still be feeling like this. Sure the feelings had dimmed, it didn't consume him whole like it had done before, but it was still there, sat in the pit of his stomach like an old friend that he couldn't get rid of.

He pulls his hands away from his eyes and takes a large swig of his beer. As he places the glass back down on the counter he glances up and his stomach twists into knots as his eyes meet Ian's.

*

He had to get away. He had to get away from everyone, everything, this house full of memories, the life he had left behind. He had to escape, just for a little while.  
Seeing Mandy had his fingers twitching. The need to move, to get out and do something was building inside his chest and he just - he needed to get out. He didn't know what he needed. He didn't know what he was feeling.  
It just all felt suddenly like too much. His heart raced and ached in his chest and he found himself walking and walking, legs carrying him, a barely muttered goodbye to the house full of his family.

He didn't know where he was going or what he needed, but he just knew he needed something.

Something.

He somehow winds up at the Alibi, eyes barely focusing on Kev as he orders a beer.

Something was building up inside of him, a hunger, an urge, a need and he couldn't figure out what it was.

But as he turns his head, his eyes meet Mickey's and It hits him like a freight train speeding in his direction, blinding lights and too much noise and suddenly things were clear.

He needed Mickey.

His lips turn up in a smile and his heart trips over itself in his chest and he feels like he's taking his first breath after holding it for far too long. His eyes uncertain and his voice stuttering in his throat, he can barely himself as his heart pounds in his ears, "hey"

Mickey's eyes search his face, just like Mandy's had done a few hours before, and he smiles at Ian before he can stop it and Ian can see Mickey's fingers twitching as they curl into his palm and he bites at the inside of his cheek as Mickey nods his head in a hello.

And suddenly, like pieces of a puzzle fitting together, Southside feels like home again.


End file.
